How to debug why azure web job does not start? - azure

In Visual Studio, I am deploying a web site to Azure via the Publish menu option, and the project has an existing web job added to it (via the Add menu). It was added as a continuous job, and has the correct entries in the 'webjob-publish-settings.json' and 'webjobs-list.json' files.
When I publish the web site, the job is compiled and put into place in the 'jobs' folder and published with the web site. However, it is not started. No entry is added automatically to the WebJobs settings page in Azure, which remains empty. There are no errors in the output window.
The Azure webjobs documentation states that it will attempt to run a selection of files from within the webjob directory, and one of these is any file that ends with ".exe". The webjob project is a console project, and compiles into an exe which is published in the directory.
In the past, I have published this job by zipping the contents of the 'bin\Release' directory, and adding it manually.
How can I debug why it does not start when deployed automatically?

First thing you should do is look at exactly what got deployed, to make sure it looks like what you expect. To do this:
Go to Kudu Console
Go to D:\home\site\wwwroot\App_Data\jobs\continuous
You should see a folder named after your WebJob in there. Go in that folder
Check that it has all the right files
If it doesn't, then you likely have some kind of deployment issue, and it is not an issue with the WebJobs runtime.

I think when you published the Web site, it just copied over the Webjob files but Azure does not know that there's a Webjob that has been published. Could you please try publishing the WebJob separately by selecting "Publish as Webjob" option. If it has problems publishing that way then there's some problem in your Webjob, like app settings etc, and if it is successfully published then I guess you have to publish it separately every time or find a hack in Publish settings of the Website to publish both the projects.
Hope it helps. Thanks

I had a web job that was working fine, I stopped it, changed a value in the config file and started it again. It didn't start, no errors, no log issues, nothing at all.
How I fixed it? I clicked "Restart" button in the app service that contains all the web jobs.
Note: stop and start did not work, only "Restart" did the trick. It really makes no sense but that's what happened. I hope it helps others with the same issue.

Related

Azure - Web deployment task failed. An error was encountered when processing operation 'Delete Directory' on (Application Insights)

I'm using Right-Click publish in Visual Studio to publish directly to my staging slot in Azure. I've added Application Insights that added a WebJob to my app.
I have enabled Remove additional files at destination and Precompile during Publishing turned on.
But when a Web Job is running and my staging site is not 'stopped', because it's still warmed up - I get the following error:
Web deployment task failed. ((18-Jan-18 22:47:23) An error occurred
when the request was processed on the remote computer.)
(18-Jan-18 22:47:23) An error occurred when the request was processed
on the remote computer. An error was encountered when processing
operation 'Delete Directory' on
'D:\home\site\wwwroot\App_Data\jobs\continuous'. The error code was
0x80070091. The directory is not empty.
at
Microsoft.Web.Deployment.NativeMethods.RaiseIOExceptionFromErrorCode(Win32ErrorCode
errorCode, String maybeFullPath) at
Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DirectoryEx.Delete(String path) at
Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DirPathProviderBase.Delete(Boolean
whatIf) ProjectX.Web 7 0
I can fix this by manually stopping the staging slot, upload it, and then start it again. This is quite cumbersome though.
Is there a fix?
I read somewhere that you can automatically take the (staging) app offline during publish but I can't find the setting.
UPDATE 1
<PropertyGroup>
<EnableMSDeployAppOffline>true</EnableMSDeployAppOffline>
</PropertyGroup>
...is not working for me.
UPDATE 2
Adding the WEBJOBS_STOPPED setting on the Staging slot is not working for me.
As you have enabled Application Insights on your Azure App Service, it has internally installed an extension which started a continuous web job and content corresponding to web job got copied to App_Data folder. The actual problem is because extension data get copied to App_Data folder where only user's data should reside instead of infrastructure data.
Now when you are selecting the option "Remove Additional Files From Destination" in visual studio, it tries to remove all contents including Application Insights data from App_Data folder. Since Application Insights web job is already running in background hence corresponding dll files are locked.
Even if you go with option of "App Offline" or "Stop web job" and successfully able to delete all contents then your deployment will succeed but this way your Application Insights will get corrupted and hence you may have to configure Application Insights again.
Suggestion:
Select skip "App_Data" folder along with option "Remove Additional Files From Destination".
It will delete all content except App_Data folder content and hence dll files corresponding to Application Insights continuous web job will be skipped.
Reference :
VSTS - Azure App Service Task Documentation
Limitation
Though this solution have a limitation - If you want to remove/modify existing user defined web jobs then can't skip App_Data folder. In such case either have to perform two step deployment or have to reinstall application insight extension again.
I found this in another SO question:
<PropertyGroup>
<EnableMSDeployAppOffline>true</EnableMSDeployAppOffline>
...
</PropertyGroup>
... adding to your publishing profile (.pubxml).
The full answer is here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20888597/647845
UPDATE
This is not working for me. Maybe for others. Seems to ignore the setting.

You do not have permission to view this directory or page Azure Dropbox

I am trying to deploy azure web app. Below is the link.
denemezk.azurewebsites.net
When I first create the page it works, it gives a default page that says you should deploy now.
But when I try to deploy something -anything- via Dropbox, it says "You do not have permission to view this directory or page" and even if i delete everything this never changes. It does not return to the default page, it still gives the same error message on the title. I can no longer use that page. How can I fix this?
Thank you,
I am editting this post because I dig a little deeper and find out that when I deploy things, I am deleting the hostingstart.html file.
What could I be doing wrong? and,
How can I fix it?
You have to actually go to the Azure Deployment Options and click Sync, this will pull the changes from the DropBox folder in to your wwwroot folder.
The fist thing you should do is actually go and check the folders if your war got unpacked inside the webapps folder. for that if your web url is "denemezk.azurewebsites.net" then try to open denemezk.scm.azurewebsites.net. This should redirect you to KUDU interface where you can see few tabs. From those tabs select Debug Console and then select CMD from the drop down. This should give you a folder structure.Now Go to site->wwwroot->webapps . There check if your war got unpacked.
If not then try restarting the web app and see id this does the trick.
If while creating your app service plan you have selected the Standard pricing tier, change it to premium.
Last but not the list you can enable logging for you app. Then go to Monitoring-> Diagnostics logs . Turn those setting on. Then select Log streaming(Just below Diagnostics logs).
Hope this help.

VSO not deploying Azure website with WebJob

A website with webjob not deploying to Azure.
I am having an issue getting a website with an associated webjob console application to deploy using continuous deployment via Visual Studio Online. I am using VS2013 with update 4 and latest Azure SDK.
The website, and the associated webjob, will publish to Azure using direct publish for Visual Studio and works perfectly, so I am confident the publish settings are fine.
The solution will build and work locally fine.
The solution, once checked in, will build and (seemingly) deploy fine in VSO (using CI) and Azure notes the build was successful and shows it as 'Active deployment'.
However, the website and associated webjob will not be updated.
When I have browsed the deployed files after the VSO build and deploy on Azure, all that is happening, is the binaries of the console app are being copied into the bin/ folder of the website.
None of the website files are being updated. It is almost as if it is deploying the wrong project!
If I remove the Webjob and just deploy the website, it will build and deploy fine through VSO - the website will update.
It is adding the webjob that causes some issue with the deployment via VSO.
I am confident all steps are correct to add the webjob to the WebApp, with the correct webjobs-list.json being added to the webapp and webjob-publish-settings.json to the Console app - as I said, publishing the website (with the webjob) direct to Azure works perfectly, and both the site and webjob get updated.
I have searched post after post and tried all manner of things, but none have worked.
Given the fact this published fine direct from VS, and also that the build is completing, it would suggest that something is wrong with the VSO Build Defintion.
My first guess would be to change it from building the solution to instead building the web project only, but this does not seem to work.
I have also tried every Output location setting (both for the solution build and the web project build) - the only one that works and the build completes is the solution (.sln) build with 'SingleFolder' set.
I have been battling this for a couple of days now an I'm a bit stumped!
This also happens if you have a static website being deployed using a Visual Studio solution via VSO with an automated build - unless the Visual Studio project / solution containing the website is changed then the actual site contents will not be redeployed.
I think your hunch that it's deploying the wrong project is correct. If you have multiple "deployable" projects in your solution (and the console app is considered deployable, as this is one way you can host/deploy a webjob), you need to tell Kudu which one to deploy.
You can control it adding a new setting under "app settings" on the "configure" tab for the webapp.
The setting you want is Project and it's a relative path from the solution root to the .csproj file of your web project.
Alternatively, you can specify the setting in a custom .deployment file.
Relevant Kudu documentation here
From the documentation:
You can specify the full path to the project file. Note that this is not a path to the solution file (.sln), but to the project file (.csproj/.vbproj). The reason for this is that Kudu only builds the minimal dependency tree for this project, and avoids building unrelated projects in the solution that are not needed by the web project.
Here is an example:
[config]
project = WebProject/WebProject.csproj
I have also tried every Output location setting (both for the solution build and the web project build) - the only one that works and the build completes is the solution (.sln) build with 'SingleFolder' set
That's the root case of problem.
You can't have SingleFolder as it sets the OutDir which mess up with web job packaging.
I had to introduce a wpp.targets files in each of my web app project to create the publish package to a particular path (using PackageLocation)
So, let each project have that and set the setting to AsConfigured (or Per Project) instead of SingleFolder.
See this

Publish Azure WebJob including all items from bin-folder

I'm trying to publish my WebJob which is connected to an Azure Website. So I use Publish on the website. This will publish the site and inside the App_Data-Folder the files for the WebJob are deployed.
The problem is, that I use the NuGet package Microsoft.SqlServer.Types inside the WebJob which brings 2 dlls one of which is a C++ native lib. This dll lays in "/bin/SqlServerTypes" of my WebJob-bin-folder which wouldn't be deployed by the publish-operation. Only items directly laying inside of the bin-Folder of the WebJob are deployed.
How can I ensure, that the complete bin-folder from the WebJob-project is deployed to App_Data on the web?
What I tried so far is:
Adding a project-reference to the WebJob-project in the WebSite-project.
Generating the folder-structure under App_Data in VS and referencing the dll there.
Edit: Turns out, that I had a simple spelling bug when creating the structure beneath the App_Data-Folder. In my case it worked when I just added those dlls in the folder the tooling expected them to be. See the answers for other good links.
I had a similar issue. Check this out.
As far as I know, this hasn't been solved yet. A workaround is to copy the relevant dependencies via FTP.
Hope this helps.

How to take web app offline while publishing?

Very often, when I hit Publish in VS13, I get the site to compile but when uploading I get the error saying that a file is busy.
Updating file (MyAzureSite\PrecompiledApp.config).
C:...\v12.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets(4255,5):
Error ERROR_FILE_IN_USE: Web deployment task failed.
(The file 'PrecompiledApp.config' is in use.
Learn more at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=221672#ERROR_FILE_IN_USE.)
When I follow the link provided, it's suggested that I should go for enabling the appOffline rule. "Sure!", I think to myself. But how?! I've googled it, only to get a bunch of hits on the file that's supposed to replace the site while publishing. However, I get no info on how to get rid of my little problem.
I went the easy way and downloaded a publishing profile from my Azure web site and now I'm using it (you know, ALT+B+H).
Right now I resolve the problem by going to the portal for Azure and manually take the site off-line. Then I can publish and after that I take the site on-line. Highly impractical and painfully tedious.
What is causing this and how do I kill it?
You actually configure it in the publishing profile (.pubxml). Just add the element to the PropertyGroup like this:
<PropertyGroup>
<EnableMSDeployAppOffline>true</EnableMSDeployAppOffline>
...
</PropertyGroup>
More in this MSDN document
The Azure App Service Deployment Task has a checkbox for this (from version 2.0 onwards), under Additional Deployment Options: Take App Offline. Check that and you should be good to go.
Take Application Offline: Select the option to take the AzureRM Web App offline by placing an app_offline.htm file in the root directory of the Web App before the sync operation begins. The file will be removed after the sync operation completes successfully.
Screenshot:

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